Rating: Aa3/-/A+
Amount: Eu300m
Maturity: 21 May 2010
Issue/re-offer price: 99.856%
Coupon: 5.375%
Spread at re-offer: 100bp over mid-swaps
Launched: Friday 8 May
Payment date: 21 May
Joint books: BBVA, Natixis
Bookrunners’ comment:
The issuer had been hoping for a quick deal, and given the strong demand for the shorter end of the maturity curve recently, a two year transaction was the clear place to go to.
No formal comparables were set for guidance, but given the performance of other recent Spanish issuers such as the Caja Madrid deal a couple of weeks ago which priced at 105bp over mid-swaps, we set guidance at 100bp-105bp over mid-swaps.
Spanish names had been out of the market for a while, but over the last few weeks there has been more opportunities for them to do transactions. Unicaja hasn’t issued a lot of paper in the past, so it is quite a rare name. Combine this with its strong double-A rating, and it became clear that we would see good investor demand.
We saw a lot of accounts that were attracted by the opportunity to diversify their portfolio with this smaller name.
The book built quickly and was soon oversubscribed — well over the Eu300m that the issuer had been hoping to raise. Due to this, we were able to print it at the tightest end of guidance at 100bp over mid-swaps. Compared to the Ibercaja deal on Tuesday, which had similar guidance but then was priced at the wider end, at 105bp over mid-swaps, it looks particularly strong.
This transaction was heavily driven by domestic investors. Two-thirds of demand was from the domestic sphere, followed by France and Germany.
In terms of investor type, we mostly saw demand from insurance and asset management firms.